BATON ROUGE - Amid a shortage of emergency medical technicians, advancements to EBR's EMT division are gaining national recognition thanks to its medical director, Dr. Dan Godbee.

Dr. Godbee started his journey as an Eagle Scout before rising in the military ranks, attaining sergeant major. He went on to get his engineering degree and used it to focus his efforts in the medical field.

Dr. Godbee says his 44 years of service to the country have given him a different perspective on how to expand the boundaries of medical practices. 

"The idea is if you enter a building and you want to get to the second floor, there are many ways to do it," Dr. Godbee said. "There are elevators, there are escalators, there are stairs, whichever one of those works... let's get to the second floor."

He says part of making that possible is having a dedicated team that's passionate about helping the community.

Dr. Godbee went on to say that part of what sets East Baton Rouge emergency medical services apart is their ability to handle each case differently depending on the situation and the individual. 

To continue that path, the EMS center has made several new advancements to its EMS units. In addition to new UV sanitation lights and driver safety measures, they've also incorporated automated CPR machines. 

"Equipment implementation recently is the LUCAS device for mechanical CPR," Dr. Godbee said. "It's a profound impact on the benefit we can provide to patients in cardiac arrest. We get tired doing CPR, we're not doing it at a high-quality level or correctly—the machine only knows one way to do it: the correct way. It only does it that way all the time."

However, there are still issues with EMT shortages. 

"We need more medics. I think that's our number one goal... to try and get more medics to recruit into the system."

That isn't the only problem the department has been dealing with. Dr. Godbee says they're starting to see a startling trend with young children. 

"We've had an uptick in the number of opioid deaths, or opioid-like deaths... particularly in the pediatric population. They're being exposed to things like fentanyl and other types of opioid drugs, and having bad reactions to them." 

With leading technology and a total of 36 units by the end of this year, Dr. Godbee says they hope they can continue medical innovations to help the capital city.